


Name Day

by LadyEm



Series: The Spaces Between [6]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Stars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-18
Updated: 2019-07-18
Packaged: 2020-07-08 05:01:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19863907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyEm/pseuds/LadyEm
Summary: Night 16 in Winterfell. Jaime doesn't have a gift for Brienne's Name Day





	Name Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoreWorlds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoreWorlds/gifts).



> So, the lovely CoreWorlds let slip that it is her birthday today! And I made her cry with the latest update of _A Second Chance_, so I thought I might try to make it better.
> 
> Happy birthday! It's something else rather than more of the same, but this was written especially for your birthday.

It is the middle of the night when he wakes her.

She feels the pats first, soft, gentle pats against her shoulder, near her collar bone. With a grumble, she rolls onto her side, pulling the furs more closely about her. Perhaps, if she ignores them, they will stop.

Next, there’s a tickle – wiry hair, scratching at her shoulder. She’s more awake now, knows that it is Jaime, rubbing at her with his beard. She loves the feeling, but wishes he would stop, let her sleep. There’s so much to do at Winterfell these days, even though most of their army has gone South with the Dragon Queen. And it’s so overwhelmingly cold; only in her room can she truly feel warm, with the fire blazing, the furs about her. 

Jaime is pressed against her back, and she burns where he touches her. It has been sixteen days since he came to her room, and she can still scarcely believe he is there. Sixteen days and – perhaps more importantly – sixteen nights, alone together. He’s nuzzling her neck now, slow, warm kisses in that sensitive spot. 

“I know you’re awake,” he murmurs, his voice curling around her, thick like treacle. “Brienne.” Her name has never sounded so beautiful. She is unused to this, has blocked out everything that is soft for so long, has never _felt_ the way she has since Jaime. She feels everything now – the brush of linen against her body, the sound of his voice, the sight of him. He walked past her in the training yard and she could smell him – that clean, slightly spicy scent – and she would have dragged him to her chamber and lain with him if he had so much as looked at her. When she ate, when she drank, she thought of how the foods might taste to Jaime. When he drank, she thought of tasting the wine on his lips and on his tongue. 

Fully awake, she rolled to face him, kissing him deeply.

He nudged her. “Dearly as I would like to continue this, we have things to do, wench.”

She looked around her. The fire blazed in the hearth – he must have built that up – but otherwise the room was pitch dark.

“Jaime, what time is it?”

He shrugged, throwing back the sleeping furs and standing, hurrying to the clothes he had hung on chairs near the fire.

“It doesn’t matter. You need to get dressed now. No armour, no swords. We’re not going far.”

She frowned, considered trying to go back to sleep, but she was curious now. With a groan, she stretched one leg out from beneath the covers. Jaime had already tugged on his breeches and was sitting to pull on a second pair of woollen socks. 

“Up now,” he reminded her. “Your clothing is warmed, my lady.”

Knowing that there would be no stopping him now – if, indeed, there had ever been such a chance – she stood and crossed to the fireplace, warming herself as she pulled on her clothing. Her boots were dry, at least, and her cloak was thick and furred. She would have to get furs for Jaime, too, she thought – his cloak of boiled wool was adequate but hardly warm enough if they were to stay in Winterfell.

Once they were dressed, he opened the door and took her by the hand. He led her through the Keep and then up the stairs to the battlements, nodding at the night watchman who kept himself warm by a lit brazier. “He’ll not be moving tonight,” Jaime murmured. “Not in this cold. He’ll be asleep again in moments.”

She wanted to tell him that at least it was a natural cold now, not the strange iciness that had accompanied the Night King and his undead armies, but he was pulling at her hand, leading her up to the highest point of the walls, silent, dark and bitterly cold. The moon hung to the West tonight, low in the sky, allowing the stars to shine through.

Jaime stood her at the battlements, facing outwards from the keep, positioning himself just behind her, the stump of his right arm holding her to him. From this angle, the world seemed vast, comprising only shadowed shapes of forests and hills and the twinkling blackness of the sky. 

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it,” he murmured in her ear. “Whenever I need time to think, wherever I am, I try to come out and look at the sky. It’s so peaceful.”

She hummed her agreement, although the true beauty of the night was having Jaime there, pressed against her, holding her, feeling his chest rumble as he spoke.

“I had heard,” he said carefully, “that today was your name day” – and with a shock, she realised that he was correct.

“I don’t have a gift for you,” he said sadly – but really, who _would_ have a gift in these days of fighting – “so I thought I would give you the stars.”

He pointed to a cluster of stars over towards the East. “I call those, The Wench’s Sword.”

She giggled. “Jaime, how much do you know about the stars and constellations?”

He was affronted. “I know enough. See, over there is the Great Bear.” He was right in this.

“And up there,” he pointed to a distant group of stars in the North. “I call those stars Tarth. There were nights when I dreamed of flying away, of taking you and me to Tarth, leaving all of this behind.”

“But you couldn’t, Jaime, not when there was so much to do,” and she was so _sure_ that even if he hadn’t been, he was now.

A shooting star fell towards the ground, and she gasped at its beauty.

“What is that cluster there?” she asked him.

“The Maiden’s Nose,” Jaime said confidently. “It has just the shape of yours. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “you are hardly a Maiden any more. Perhaps I should call it –” she turned within his arms, silenced him with her lips. His hand came up to cup her cheek, stroking gently as they kissed, the only two people awake in Winterfell, desire stirring as it always did when they were together.

It came to him, then, that he would wed her now if she would have him. Instead, he turned her to face outwards again.

“Do you trust me?” he asked her, half-afraid of her answer.

“Of course I trust you, Jaime,” she replied with not even a hint of hesitation.

Slowly, he raised the back of her cloak, until it rested at her waist, then unclasped her breeches and let them fall. “Lean forward,” he whispered, as he untied his own, and she rested her elbows on the crenellations. His hand slipped around her soft thigh, checking that she was wet and ready for him. Leaning forward, he slipped himself inside her, tracing patterns on her nub with his fingers.

“Jaime, what if someone comes?”

“I am hoping,” he said with a rumble, “that two people will come.”

She groaned at his pun. “Someone else, Jaime”

“Then they will envy me my Lady Knight,” he said with certainty. “But they will not, Brienne. It is the depths of night.”

She moved on him with a sigh.

“Up in the South, high in the sky,” said Jaime, “that circle of stars? That is the baths of Harrenhall.” His finger drew circles on her most sensitive place. “And there, just beyond it, is the Bridge where we fought.” His finger flicked back and forth, faster and faster, and he began to thrust, in and out in long, slow strokes. She could not touch him, could do nothing but feel, pinned between the cold stone and the heat of her lover.

“And there,” he said, nudging her head with his own to look straight ahead in front of them, “there in front of us” – he was moving faster now, and she had to force herself to keep her eyes open as she raced towards her peak – “those are the crossed Swords of Ice. We’re in the stars, Brienne. This was meant to be.” His finger drew crosses, looping about her, pressing and stroking.

She shattered then, sobbing his name on a rush of emotion, and four more thrusts had him there too, spilling into her with a shout, then whispering her name into her ear: “Brienne. Brienne. Brienne.” They stood like that for a moment, then she remembered where they were, disengaging from him and reaching for her breeches. He did the same – “It’s cold enough out here to freeze my –” and she covered his mouth first with her hand and then with her lips. 

“That was beautiful, Jaime,” she whispered to him, “although I can’t believe that we did _that_ outside.

His grin was smug. “Just wait for the Summer, wench.”

“I shall hold you to that, Ser Jaime,” she replied.

They had never spoken of a future together, had never dared to think of what might yet come, what might be. Tonight, he had given her the stars, but they had given one another a promise of what the future might hold.

It was enough, for now.


End file.
